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14 February 2010

Just Because You Have a Vagina…

Doesn’t mean you have to train like a pussy. I know this revelatory statement doesn’t exactly fall in line with my previous posts directed at women, but it is true. Though women have for millennia been typically dissuaded from becoming athletes, or from engaging in much in the way of physical activity at all, certain women, and groups of women, have excelled as athletes and participants in physical culture. Unfortunately, modern women have in their minds only Eastern European swimmers and farm women in their minds as toilers at lifting heavy weights, and they thus have an altogether mistaken impression of what the results of heavy weight training are.

The most badass female athletes of the ancient world seem to have all come areas around the Near East –the Mediterranean, Southern Russia, and Central Asia. The earliest accounts I could find of women who were renown for both being hot as shit and brutal fucking athletes were the Spartans. Spartan women enjoyed far more freedom than did other Grecian women, and were pretty much like a cross between hardened military wives and WWE female wrestlers- they dressed like total sluts, trained in the nude, and screamed statements like “Come back with your shield, or on it” and “Where have you come now in your cowardly flight, vile varlets? Do you intend to slink in here whence you came forth?”, whereafter the loudmouthed badass pulled up her miniskirt and flashed her vag at her own cowardly sons. (1) Sparta’s women were known for being total bitches, obviously, in addition to being the hottest broads in the entire ancient world, in spite of the fact that they were forbidden from wearing any kind of makeup or wear jewelry of any kind. Gladly, they were well-educated, witty, and ascerbic, and spurned the vapid, shiftless layabouts they saw populating Athenian parties.

Basically, it would be like having one town consisted of nothing but a cross between Jennie McCarthy and a champion fitness competitor publicly mocking the Kardashians, all the while dressed like whores and planning to stab a motherfucker if he didn’t bring the goods later that evening.

The Romans also had their fair share of women athletes, including female gladiators, who were considered something of a violent sexual sideshow. Domitian regularly held brawls between chicks and midgets, for instance, and an inscription at Ostia (had I known this when I was there, I would have tried to find a topless chick to pit against a midget) proclaims that women fought in gladiatorial matches there beginning around 300BC and kept doing so for at least a couple of hundred years. So many Roman women attempted to fight in the arena, apparently, that laws had to be enacted to prevent them from doing so, but that didn’t prevent women from training their asses off, getting jacked, and shedding some fucking blood for the entertainment of the greasy, unwashed, Roman hordes.

See her neck bent down under the weight of her helmet.

Look at the rolls of bandage and tape, so her legs look like tree-trunks,

Then have a laugh for yourself, after the practice is over,

Armour and weapons put down, and she squats as she used the vessel.

Ah, degenerate girls from the line of our praetors and consuls,

Tell us, whom have you seen got up in any such fashion,

Panting and sweating like this? No gladiator’s wench,

No tough strip-tease broad would ever so much as attempt it. (2)

Everyone knows the story of the Amazons, a semi-mythical race of hard-as nails broads from either the Ukraine or Crete, who ruined lives and broke hearts to the point where we’re still making movies about them. Amazonian women were so fucking hard that their customs declared that "No girl shall wed till she has killed a man in battle", they are credited with inventing the battle axe (the labrys, a doubleheaded axe common in Minoan, Thracian, and Greek culture and range in size from 1-6lbs), and they spawned an entire genre of art (amazonomachy), which features buff, big-tittied, angry broads slaughtering Greeks by the boatload.

Another chick from that general neck of the woods who generally got after it was a 13th C Tatar princess named Aiyaruk. According to David Willoughby, this broad wouldn’t marry anyone she could beat in wrestling, and successfully defeated over 100 suitors over the course of her life. Each many was required to put up 100 horses for the opportunity to wrestle her, and she allegedly amassed over 10000 horses but throat stomping each sorry motherfucker into the ground. Now, this chick was alleged to be a giant, but given that the average height of a Mongol woman is 5’1”, I highly doubt she was over 6’, but she was said to have been stronger than any man in Turkestan. Sick.(3)

Skip forward to modern times. Some chicks appear to be getting the message that lifting weights will not magically turn you into a Slavic farm woman, fat, overly muscular, and generally fucking haggard. Instead, it’ll make you lean, generally improve your outlook on life, and possibly earn you free drinks at the bar when you smoke a couple of dudes in armwrestling. Crossfit has shown, if nothing else, that doing compound lifts will transform chick’s physiques into a level of badassedness that most chicks don’t even believe to be physically possible. Most chicks will continue eating their same shitty diets and fucking around with cardio all days long, and continue to look like a wad of warm cookie dough for their shitty, misapplied, half-assed, laughable efforts. If they properly apply themselves, however, they can look like the following broads:

Vulcana: English pro strongwoman who could do a 2 Hands Anyhow of 201 (bent press 145 lbs, 56 lbs kettlebell in the other hand) at a bodyweight of 125.

Hannah Johnson: IPA National Champ at 132 lbs, and winner of the Harley Davidson Bikini Contest.

Crossfit chicks: They’re hot. The end.

Thus, a few suggestions for any chick who is reading this(as if there is a woman on Earth who reads this), or suggestions you could give chicks who could stand to apply CnP principles:

· Nothing will make chicks huge, outside of heavy anabolic use. The size of their physique will be dictated, by and large, by their diet. Keep it paleo and you’ll keep it tight.

· Lift fucking heavy. We all know what lifting light get you- a shitbox physique to go with your shitbox regime. Form follows function, as the Bulgarians are fond of saying.

· Just because you’re a women does not mean that you need to train less, lighter, or less intensely. The Chinese dominate women’s weightlifting, and their coach has been quoted saying that women have a greater work capacity than men. Bizarre, but true.

· Focus on lower body work- chicks have better leverages for it due to their hip structure, it burns the most calories, and it works the typical female “problem areas” the hardest.

If you know a chick who’s gonna lift, give her those suggestions. If you’ve got a wife/girlfriend/friend who doesn’t want to lift, let her know that she needs to make with some form of grilled meat and stay the fuck out of your way while you're lifting. And by the way, as a bit of motivation for those of you who could care less about broads lifting, Liu Chunhong is a Chinese chick who holds the world record at 152lbs (69 kg), and she clean and jerks 347.6 lbs, snatches 281.6, front squats 440, back squats 506, and JERKS 385 OFF THE FUCKING RACK. (4)

Embarrassed? I sure as fuck am. I’ve never wanted to look like a chick before today. This sucks.

21 comments
:

Er, yeah, there are women that read this site! We manage to look past your, um, lovable gruffness about our entire gender. I started helping Dad in the gym back when I was 9-10 (I got to hold the stop watch as he timed his rests, big job!), and 20 years later I still hit the gym harder then most of the men I know. Now, granted, most of the men I know are either in the Air Force (whose mentality is fit = ability to run away) and Hungarians (whose gym time consists of bicep curls that I could do easily). Now, I slacked for a while, had a few kids, let myself get fat and lazy, but at least I admit it and I get my ass to the weight room. I'm relatively strong for a woman and I'm not afraid of it. I will admit to having the typical female "I ate a cupcake and now my seratonin levels are wacked and if you don't give me another I'll rip your face off" food issues, but at least I learn about the physical reasons and avoid as many carbs as possible. Not all women are stupid... But so many are dumb. Oh, at 5'6" (and back at the gym for a month) I deadlifted 235 and had the Hungarian men looking at me like I was slowly growing tentacles out my head.

I made the mistake of showing my gf pics of lightweight oly lifters and hannah johnson when trying to show she wouldn't get bulky. She was not impressed, I should perhaps hunt out crossfit pics only from now on. I think we men who've lifted for a while forget that our idea of big has been altered somewhat compared to someone starting out.

Before you have a tirade of people commenting on here about what female athletes should or shouldn't look like - http://www.stumptuous.com/why-dont-you-look-like-a-fitness-model

Even if you don't read it - look at the 5 pictures of about 30 female Olympic athletes (from years ago). Gives you an idea of how different women can look at varying states of fitness/sports participation/etc.

And for those that have women in their lives, it helps not to have a guy telling you that there is only one way to look :)

That said, I like how Jamie looks, so you men should all strive for that LOL JK

and yet another chick who reads your blog! and a cf one too! I'm about to share it with my bootcamp girls too...with just a little disclaimer warning about your language! which doesn't bother me a fucking bit...but might surprise some of them! and good article!!!

Dude. CrossFit chicks ARE hot. But who cares if a woman doesn't want to "get big". Let her go do her thing and stay exactly the way she is.

There are enough of us out here lifting heavy shit and looking HAWT HAWT HAWT.. NOT because we are working on our bodies to pose for the pictures, but because we are working on improving our strength and speed, and can't HELP but be smoking hawt as we do it.

"A whole troop of foreigners would not be able to withstand a single Celt if he called his wife to his assistance. The wife is even more formidable. She is usually very strong, and has blue eyes; in rage her neck veins swell, she gnashes her teeth, and brandishes her snow-white robust arms. She begins to strike blows mingled with kicks, as if they were so many missiles sent from the string of a catapult. The voices of these women are formidable and threatening, even when they are not angry but being friendly." - Ammianus Marcellinus

Until the guy from Team Gorilla mentioned it, I never would have believed it. My point wasn't necessarily that you people HAVE to lift heavy- it's just that the traditional chick mindset of cardio and low protein/low fat/high carbs is the road to physical hell.

This is a great motivational article for all intensive purposes, and im jealous as i see the results these womens hard work has produced. However, until after i had a child, being fit was easy enough, as i am military, however, after losing the baby weight plus some, i lost track and dedication, now that i have figured out time management with a lil one, i want to get my body back.. A recommended workout routine would be great. I have seen a lot of them, but i need one that allows for a good deal of cardio+weight lifting to lose weight and get toned since i have running requirements for work. Any articles or advice would be helpful!!

'Broads', 'chicks'. How fucking depressing. The Spartan women were so tough that they were 'forbidden' to look how they wanted to? Inspiring. I'm sure that in your idiot brain this was meant to be in some way empowering for women, but it just shows that you think that women exist purely to entertain men. If women train hard then they might even get some free drinks at the bar? If they don't then they'll look like warm cookie dough? Women can look however they want, it's not your place to comment on it. That eating well and working out may help women feel healthier and happier must be of no consequence to you, as you haven't bothered to mention it amongst all of the comparisons of women to men. The fact that you felt you had to cobble together a few half-hearted historical mis-quotes and some simpleton logic to write this article at all only attests to how little you understand women and the paltry rights that they've had to struggle so hard to achieve.

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